Candle in the Wind
by ncfan
Summary: AU. Rukia licked her dry lips as she stared down at the wan, listless face that looked just like her own. The woman lying on the tatami mat was asleep. "Hello?" she called softly. Sequel to 'Revelations of Hunger'.


**Characters**: Rukia, Hisana, Byakuya, Renji**  
Pairings**: ByaHisa**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Spoilers for Soul Society arc; AU**  
Timeline**: Pre-manga**  
Author's Note**: This is the sequel and spiritual successor to _Revelations of Hunger._ For those of you who read and liked _Revelations of Hunger,_ I hope you'll like this too. Oh and, just for the record, I had this in the works since I was working on _Revelations of Hunger_; I was, however, pleased to see that there are reviewers that would like to see a sequel.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

The drenched, bedraggled, slightly wild-eyed traveler through Inuzuri Rukia had met bore little resemblance to the composed, dignified man she saw now from across the courtyard of the Kuchiki estate, as the crimson ball of the sun was putting heavy sanguine light over everything in its path, including her and him.

Byakuya had tried to drag her off the moment she had owned up to her name in Inuzuri, and would have too, despite the violent thunder storm, if Rukia had not dug her heels in and started naming terms.

One. She wasn't moving an inch in any direction without Renji. Renji, who had been Rukia's friend through adversity and the worst times of their lives. Renji, who wanted to be a Shinigami and have some chance at a life of more than scrabbling on the very edge in Inuzuri, just as Rukia did. Renji, whom Rukia refused to leave behind and refused to do without.

Two, and this was where Rukia got a calculating gleam in her eye. She reiterated the fact that she and Renji desired to become Shinigami. While it was not a requirement, perhaps Byakuya could help with that? It was a genuine and reasonable request, considering how hard it was for denizens of the outer districts who applied for admission to the Academy to actually _get_ admission. And if Byakuya was going to drag Rukia and Renji away from Inuzuri, he couldn't reasonably expect them to sit on their hands doing nothing once they got to Seireitei.

Byakuya grew faintly exasperated at this point and muttered something along the lines of "being able to get what they want must be a familial trait". Or something like that; Rukia wasn't listening very hard, and the rain was quite loud over their heads. Rukia had to resist smiling though; it would have destroyed the entire tone of the negotiations.

Three, the final act. On the way to Seireitei, Byakuya would tell Rukia _everything._ Everything he hadn't told her, everything he had left out. Rukia would determine for herself whether or not this whole thing was a hoax (Even though Byakuya's desperation had had the ring of truth to it, any canny citizen of Rukongai wasn't about to take a story of _that_ quality at face value, and Rukia was no exception). Oddly, that was the condition Byakuya had the hardest time complying with. When they spent their nights in barns and inns in Rukongai on the way back, after Renji drifted off the tales would be whispered over the fire and finally Rukia began to believe him. Somewhat. The rest remained to be seen.

As it was, the three-week-long trip from Inuzuri to the interior gave Rukia the time to think, and decide that maybe Byakuya wasn't trying to trick her. But somehow…

The story remained difficult to accept, even standing under a colonnaded veranda of the Kuchiki estate as she was. Rukia had no memory of how she had gotten to Rukongai, no memory of whatever life she may have had before dying, and certainly no memory of any arms having ever held her as a baby. Let alone a woman who claimed to be her older sister.

Not that Rukia had yet see Hisana at all. The invalid wife of the Kuchiki clan head was elusive and near-impossible to find, hidden away somewhere in the vast estate, though the way the servants kept doing double takes whenever they saw her gave Rukia the impression that Byakuya may not have been exaggerating when he briefly mentioned one night that her resemblance to Hisana was uncanny.

Byakuya was conversing with two household servants who had accosted him out of nowhere; the Kuchiki estate was manned by a veritable army of servants, Rukia noticed to her annoyance, people who bowed and scraped to their small guest. Rukia didn't particularly enjoy being bowed to. She was too used to just being ignored.

The heated air, of summer beginning to evaporate into the autumn mist, was good for communicating scent across air. The heady brew of the scents of the last blush of pink, yellow, red and white roses and blue bellflowers made the air thick and lazy, and Rukia's breathing slowed.

She missed Renji, and found herself wishing she could stay in the Academy dormitories. But, Rukia supposed, she had to choose her battles sometimes, and her newly discovered brother-in-law had put his foot down at that. Rukia wasn't even entirely sure why.

Rukia's calmness evaporated when she had the realization of eyes on her, spying her out, small shadow to the wall of the veranda that she was, in the lethargic atmosphere that gripped the Kuchiki estate when locked deep in the evening. Byakuya looked up, seeming genuinely surprised to see her standing there.

It had been nearly a month since Rukia, Renji and Byakuya had traveled into Seireitei, and in that time, when away from the Academy, Rukia had never so much as laid eyes on Hisana, and had rarely seen Byakuya, whose time was mostly absorbed in business with the Sixth division, of which he was apparently lieutenant under the ailing captain. He may as well have been as much a visitor and newcomer to the Kuchiki estate as Rukia herself.

There was no desire in Rukia's bones to talk to anyone that evening, and Byakuya was not a particularly expert conversationalist to begin with. He hardly talked at all. Rukia stole back into the cool, winding, labyrinthine halls of the estate before Byakuya ever had the chance to call out her name.

.

When not studying at the Academy, Rukia's favorite hobby was roaming the halls of the Kuchiki estate.

Back in Inuzuri, when she and Renji had still been young, there had been an old man who would talk about those old fun houses, where while someone was exploring the nooks and crannies of the roadside attraction, the halls would magically seem to change before their very eyes. If behind them there had been a fork in two halls, when they looked back there would be only one hall stretching on for the length of the fun house. That was how the Kuchiki estate felt to Rukia.

Where there had once been a familiar hall, Rukia would turn and find something completely different, a new mystery to explore. It was at times a trial just to find her way back to her room (most devoid of the elaborate clutter she found in great supply in other rooms of the estate, to her immense satisfaction) at night.

Now, Rukia roamed in the hopes of avoiding the sight of smoke gray eyes, just for one night. No polite but strangely impersonal inquiries into her studies, no well-meaning but clumsy attempts at socializing.

Her hand trailed almost lackadaisically over the smooth wood walls. The heat outside sifting dully through the walls and the sheer quiet of the halls instilled a strange lethargy in Rukia; she could perform even the simplest of tasks only listlessly, and for someone so used to a hive of feverish activity, day in and day out, it was more than a little bizarre.

Rukia came to a door, down a narrow side hallway, that she hadn't come across before. It was solid, sturdy oak construction, even and level beneath the paltry weight of her small, callused hand. The position of the latch indicated that it was unlocked.

Rukia bit her lip. She would be lying if she said she wasn't curious; she was curious about closed doors by nature, as well as other things. Common sense told Rukia that she might end up regretting opening the door once she had, but, as was usual with Rukia, curiosity outweighed common sense.

Pressing her hand very lightly against the door as not to create a vortex of wind in her wake, Rukia quietly pushed the door open, hearing it creak with a disturbingly loud volume. For some reason, her breathing was picking up, muscles tensing, heart rate quickening to an uncomfortable degree.

The room had a tall, vertical window running the height of the room, opening up to another garden on the estate, with the white linen curtains drawn open, allowing red light to spill into the room. For itself, the walls were left bare except for a silken tapestry hanging down from ceiling to floor, stitched sakura blossoms floating gently to a needlework grass basin.

And at a small, strange noise, Rukia's violet gaze was drawn irresistibly to the floor.

There was a tatami mat drawn with firmly threaded wool and linen blankets as covering, and they were shifting to the rise and fall of a human pulse.

A woman slumbered beneath the covers of pale blankets, one arm protruding from beneath the shelter to reveal pale lavender silk and waxen, wasting flesh, skin that pulled tightly over a small, bird-like hand. Her hair was coal black, jutting out at the ends that brushed her shoulders, with a single lock of hair falling over her face.

Rukia's face blanched. It was as though she was staring down into her reflection in a mirror. Same small, sharp chin, same deep-set eyes (though in the case of the woman before her, lost in her deep sleep, it was clear that illness had made deep craters of her eye sockets), same compact, thin mouth.

Drawing her feet slowly over the threshold into the room, Rukia licked her dry lips as she stared down at the wan, listless face that so strongly resembled her own. "Hello?" she called softly, stuttering over the two syllables like a dumbstruck child.

For a moment, there was silence so thick and palpable that a drawn knife could have carved slices out of the air. Rukia's voice had been hushed and wavering; she comforted herself with the knowledge that her single spoken word had not carried and had not been enough to wake the ailing sleeper, the occupant of that room. The thought relieved her inordinately, with no clue as to why.

Then…

The little remaining color in Rukia's face drained out of it as eyes opened. Deep violet eyes, with a bluish tinge bordering the outer edges. Just like hers.

Rukia stood, rooted to the ground with leaden feet, as the eyes opened, and the woman awoke, languidly shaking sleep out of the contours of her face, her eyes focusing. At first, her eyes settled on the ceiling. Then, they started to search for the source of the noise that had woken her up.

Finally, the woman's—_Hisana's_—eyes settled on Rukia's face. She took a moment to adjust, but then, recognition swept over her all-too-familiar face.

"Rukia?"

At that moment, feeling returned to Rukia's legs, and her courage failed her. In a swish of heavy midnight blue silk, Rukia turned abruptly on her heel and fled the room, the sound of her own name ringing in her ears.

.

The crunch of an apple having a bite taken out of it cracked the air almost clean in half, and Rukia's lip twisted in annoyance, despite herself. It was getting to be the season for apples, and she knew Renji liked them, but really, he was being much more nonchalant about the whole thing than Rukia would have liked.

"I feel like I never see you anymore." And he was changing the subject again, too; Rukia resisted groaning in exasperation. How many times did she have to tell him to focus on the subject at hand? Of course, Renji's concentration tended to be shot after a long day at the Academy, but that was no excuse.

Rukia's mouth formed the empty excuse of a smile, somewhere between a grimace and the face one made when they were about to cry. "It was one of the few things he insisted on." That was another dilemma. What on earth was she supposed to call Byakuya? Referring to him by his given name was too familiar under any circumstances. And calling him Kuchiki-san, Kuchiki-sama, or Kuchiki-fukutaicho felt too impersonal, especially considering that the man was her brother-in-law (After laying eyes on Hisana, Rukia was willing to accept that the woman was related to her).

Renji frowned, tipping his head to get a better look at his much smaller friend's face. "He is treating you decently, isn't he? Kuchiki-fukutaicho, I mean."

Lazily, almost forgetting what she had wanted to talk to Renji about, Rukia nodded. "Yes." After a moment of hesitation, she added, "He's almost bending over backwards to be polite to me, to be honest. It's a little strange; I don't think this is how he usually behaves."

"Well, if he's trying so hard to be polite to you, can't you just ask him to let you board at the Academy? What's stopping you?"

Rukia's answer was immediate. "Guidelines to living in the outer districts of Rukongai," she droned, staring straight ahead into the rust red sky, as wind blew through the apple tree and across them, where they were sitting on a low brick wall, Rukia's legs dangling and swinging off of the edge, "Guideline Number Fifteen."

Renji snorted. "'Knowing when and how far to push your luck is an art form'. You've always been good at that, Rukia."

"And anyway, can we please get back to what I was trying to talk to you about?" Rukia's agitation bled through in her uneven voice, as it always did when she was feeling strain or stress. "I need someone to talk to this about, and you're as good as anyone."

This provoked an eye roll from Renji, and an unappreciative look in retribution from Rukia. "So what, I'm just your go-to guy or something? Don't answer that," he added quickly, wincing at the very thought. "I think I could live without knowing."

Rukia smirked, despite her best efforts not to.

"So, you think this wife of Kuchiki-fukutaicho's really is your sister?"

She shrugged. "Well, just by looking at her, we're either doppelgangers of each other or we are, in some way, related to each other. Whether she's my sister or not is a moot point; I'm just going to accept this for what it is."

Wind rustled lazily through the tree above them, sending green leaves gilt in gold fluttering to the ground in their miniature death spirals. Renji finished off his apple and tossed the core to the ground. "So, does she really look that much like you? And is she really as ill as Kuchiki-fukutaicho was saying?"

Apparently Renji had been feigning sleep during one of Byakuya and Rukia's late-night talks. She swung her head round and stared at him, and Renji grinned. "You see, you really have to make sure I'm asleep before you and Kuchiki start talking; otherwise, you've got someone who's hanging on every word."

The memory of violet eyes pierced Rukia's skull. "I don't know." Vacillating, she added, "I didn't really get that good of a look at her," Rukia lied. "But she is very ill."

"Hold on. You didn't get a good enough look at her to tell whether or not she looked like you, but you could tell that she was sick?" Renji's voice dripped skepticism. "Come on, Rukia."

Rukia started to twist the red hakama of her uniform in her hands, winding the fabric through her fingers. "I didn't _have_ to look very long to see that she was sick. And besides, the whole room smelled like someone had been trying to block out death with incense. Need I say more?"

Renji's sharp brown eyes narrowed shrewdly, holding Rukia in scrutiny. "So, basically, what you're saying is that you found out which room your sister is in. You opened the door, stuck your head inside, and then just left without saying anything."

"Yes."

"You didn't try to introduce yourself to your sister?"

"That's right."

"No talking or, you know—" Renji grinned, half teasingly, half sarcastically "—tearful family reunions? No—"

"_Renji._"

His grin evaporated. "Sorry. But you know what I'm talking about." Renji resumed his ill-conceived habit of staring directly into the sun as it set. "You know, Rukia, for all your talk about not having hard feelings towards the woman when she went off and left you as a baby, you sure don't seem to want to talk to Hisana-san."

"I'm _not_ bitter," Rukia insisted emphatically, brow furrowing in the beginnings of a frown. "Why should I be? Hisana did what she had to, in the situation she had been put in. She rose to the occasion of caring for an infant in Inuzuri as best she could, but you know as well as I do that conditions out there make it difficult to care for yourself, let alone a hungry infant. Honestly, Renji, do you think either one of us would have acted differently?"

The knowing, all-too-understanding look on Renji's face was one Rukia was quite familiar with, and still found quite maddening, under any circumstances. "See, this is just you trying to rationalize situations you haven't emotionally recalculated for. Yet again," and Rukia cast a sour look at her friend. "You are resentful of her for abandoning you; Hell, Rukia, I know you too well to think that you aren't."

Rukia's mouth tightened. "Please tell me you aren't about to turn into my psychiatrist and quote Freud at me, Renji; I'd be obliged to do something to you that I'd regret later if you did."

_Now, with the patronizing tone. Freaking hilarious._ "And all you'd be doing is proving me right. Not that you haven't already."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Renji was disobeying Guideline Number Fifteen, _again._

"Meaning, Rukia, that this whole thing you have going on with avoiding Hisana-san is an unconscious way of both punishing Hisana-san and avoiding your own mixed feelings about her. You do have a history of self-destructive behavior when it comes to emotions, you know."

"You see, you are being my psychiatrist!" Rukia exclaimed abruptly, growling and twisting away from Renji and glowering at him. "I don't want a psychiatrist, you bastard, I just want some plain, easy to understand advice!"

On anyone but Rukia, that sullen, faintly exasperated expression would have had people having second thoughts about talking to Renji in that tone of voice. Anyone but Rukia would have been cowed by the face he was wearing. Anyone but Rukia. "Okay, fine. Go talk to your sister while you still can, Rukia. Whatever she did to you, you'll regret it for the rest of your life if you don't at least try."

Rukia jerked her eyes away and returned to studying the crimson blood fall of the evening sky. The moon was rising golden and swollen, a bloated orb contrasting the sun's slow but steady descent.

Renji's voice, tired and still gruff, but not unpitying, broke the silence. "Look, I'm going to head back to the Academy while I can still see the roads. I'll see you tomorrow, Rukia."

She never answered him, but sat, frowning, staring at the moon until it got almost too dark to see the street that led back to the Kuchiki estate.

Rukia left even more uncertain than she had been when she and Renji had first begun to speak.

.

"Has she asked about me at all?"

Hisana had by now convinced herself that the girl she had seen just a few days before was just the feature of a fevered dream, and was not the sister she had prayed for nigh on thirteen years to still be alive somewhere in Inuzuri. The girl she had seen looked far too much like her, had a face far too much like a reflection of her own to be anything but a projection cast by her mind in the grips of illness. Only identical twins looked so much alike as she, Hisana had to the girl who had hovered in her doorway. She could not believe that the girl she had seen was her sister, the girl fifteen years her junior, who had been the child of their parents' old age. Just a hallucination, nothing more.

At first, when Byakuya had told Hisana that he had found Rukia out in Inuzuri and brought her back with him to Seireitei, Hisana had been jubilant, at least as jubilant as anyone could when their body was so riddled with illness that even speaking loudly came with a cost and a terrible toll. All of those nagging torments about guilt and grief had melted away for a brief golden hour.

But the gold was long since past, and guilt and grief took up residence in full swing yet again, a deadly comeback now that Hisana was finally faced by the reunion that she had always longed for yet feared. Rukia, she was sure, would look upon her and judge her, because how could anyone not judge her for what she had done? She had left a baby girl to die in Inuzuri just because the demon of hunger reared its head and roared in her own stomach. Hisana herself had been suffering and slowly dying in Inuzuri, but that gave no excuse for leaving Rukia to hold her burden in her stead. It was only by sheer miraculous luck or the grace of God that Rukia had survived as long as she had.

The lamps were flickering low on their supply of oil; Byakuya had partially doused them as concession to her lethargy, kneeling over her and grasping her hand in a fruitless effort to comfort and console. Hisana appreciated the effort though, as her rasping voice struggled to make itself heard.

Byakuya shook his head in the negative, pale brow drawing up slightly, and Hisana's heart sank into her stomach, despite her efforts not to feel disappointed. She turned her head away, and prayed he could not see her crumpled face, crushed, heartbroken, mortified.

"Between my work in the Sixth Division," Byakuya ventured, and Hisana could instantly tell from the flicker in his eyes that he was trying to ease her injured heart, "and Rukia's time at the Academy, our paths do not cross very often. Perhaps she simply does not feel it proper to question me concerning you when we do have the chance to meet."

Hisana nodded weakly, unconvinced. "Perhaps." Suddenly, Hisana turned a curious eye, the vivid purple of her iris somewhat glazed by exhaustion, on her husband. "Byakuya-sama? What is she like? Rukia, I mean."

This brought the smallest of smiles to Byakuya's face, and Hisana waited to hear what he would have to say about his young sister-in-law, encouraged since she saw him smile so rarely. "Rukia is… what her life in Inuzuri has made her. However, she is quite different from what you would expect of a seasoned resident of Rukongai."

"Go on."

Byakuya took a moment to form his words before speaking. "For all that she has been hardened, living the way she has, Rukia is…possessed of a sense of humor. A rather grim one, to be exact, though it does not show very often."

In the interim between his words, in which Byakuya, always laconic, fond of measuring his words before he spoke, and often at a loss for words altogether, began to think about what else he would say, Hisana murmured, trying and failing to sit up, "Well, that's good. It's very difficult to get through life without a sense of humor." Even Byakuya, Hisana knew, had a sense of humor; it was buried deep down and suppressed by any and all means necessary, but it did still exist. She had managed to unearth it at times.

For all intents and purposes, Byakuya did not hear her, continuing on. "She is assertive in daily life and—" Byakuya's mouth twisted in a slightly self-deprecating grimace "—she is quite skilled in getting her own way. When I first discovered who Rukia was, she started laying down terms that had to be met before she agreed to return with me to Seireitei."

Hisana was able to laugh weakly at this, before her laughter turned into a rack of phlegmy coughing. At this, Byakuya reached for a porcelain water pitcher and glass, helping her sit up and giving her the glass of water to soothe her cracked and aching throat.

"Thank you," Hisana whispered, placing the glass back down on the wood floor.

That was Byakuya's cue to go, and Hisana's reminder that the world of that plain, well-aired room was just a glass cage, hermetically sealed to keep her from growing more ill by the day, and its efforts were futile. Her life had become the boundaries of pine walls and an oak door. Hisana watched sadly, but said nothing, while Byakuya silently stood and left.

As Byakuya was closing the door behind him, he heard a soft, almost melodic swish of silken material, and jerked his head around, automatically knowing who was in the hall with him. "Rukia, wait."

But Rukia was nowhere to be found.

.

Rukia would never be sure what had drawn her back to Hisana's secluded bedchamber. She drew the door shut as gently and as quietly as she could, and knelt by the still-sleeping woman, this time remaining quiet as a mouse and silent as a winter night when fresh snowfall blanketed the land. She had plenty of time to wait for Hisana to wake up, and besides, she needed that time to gather her own thoughts.

The room was really too bare. Rukia scanned the walls critically. If Hisana spent her days bedridden in that room, then she must have been driven to distraction with boredom. Smooth, unpainted walls, only one wall hanging. Nothing to occupy her days; not even a few books to pass the time reading (And Rukia assumed that Hisana could read; she herself was still learning the finer points of literacy at the Academy). The only source of anything beyond the wall hanging and the plain walls was the window, opening up to the garden. On closer inspection, Rukia realized that the window was actually a door.

The young girl suppressed a sigh. She would have to break habit and have a talk with Byakuya about this the next time she saw him.

Rukia started focusing more on the task at hand.

Studying the contours of Hisana's face, Rukia saw past her sister's deep resemblance to her. There were shadows under the woman's eyes, compounding the hollowed out eye sockets she had already noticed. Her face was smooth and unmarked, but at the same time strained and, Rukia could guess, unnaturally pale, or at least paler than what was usual for her. There were more hollows in her face than at her eyes; her cheekbones were prominent, the skin stretched tight, her cheeks on the way to growing hollow and caved in. As a result, the sheen of Hisana's black hair seemed an unusually intense shade of blue. Rukia could guess that the woman in front of her had been beautiful when in good health, and she could still see traces of that, but Hisana just looked like she was falling apart.

Rukia pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her thin arms around her legs, frowning pensively, eyelids sinking over narrowed violet eyes.

For a moment, Rukia allowed herself to wonder why.

Her mind filtered back to what she imagined the scene to be. A sunny day in Inuzuri, so bright and cheery that the horrific destitution of the living conditions could almost be forgotten. It would have been spring, Rukia liked to think, just before the first of the flowers on the dogwood trees started to bloom. A child's cries echoed through the mild air, desolate and abandoned.

Her cries.

The thought hit Rukia. It had been her crying, crying out to someone who had turned a deaf ear to her pleas.

In that moment, Rukia wished she had never come to Seireitei. She wished she had never found out that she had a sister, and she wished to high heaven that Byakuya had never shown up, soaked to the skin and bone weary, in her and Renji's rickety tenancy house that wild and stormy night. However difficult Rukia's life may have been before seeing the gates of Seireitei, it had been much simpler, and it didn't make her stomach churn and her mind go numb and weary with so many revelations, swimming around inside and banging against the walls.

But the moment passed.

Rukia straightened out her spine. She didn't hold grudges. And she didn't run from her problems.

The coal black fringe of Hisana's eyelashes began to flutter open. Rukia gulped, suddenly intensely nervous, but she didn't back away.

Purple irises, blue around the edges, settled again on Rukia's face.

She couldn't back out now.

.

The dream-girl was back again. The girl with a carbon copy of Hisana's face, but younger and healthier. Hisana wondered if she was having another fever dream, and pushed down a slightly exasperated groan. The hallucinations were getting _old._

Wait. This was the same, but different. More substance, less flickering in and out. This, Hisana's eyes told her, was real.

She struggled to pull herself into wakefulness, to prop herself up on her elbows; the latter effort failed. Hisana strove to force into herself all the emotions she had thought she would feel upon this reunion, but honestly just felt blank and blurry. She couldn't tell if she was just tired or if the sickness had finally sapped her of her emotions too, leaving only apathy in their place.

Hisana's voice was a shadow of its normal quiet sweetness. "Rukia?" she whispered hoarsely.

.

"Rukia?"

This time, when Rukia heard her voice called, a barely audible whisper that was more like the breath of the wind, she did not shy away from it. Nor did she run. Rukia moved so, while leaning, she was hovering at Hisana's bedside, still silent, but trying to tear down that standoffish wall that had kept her from staying the last time and had kept her from even asking where her sister was staying for a month.

It was so foolish to attach herself to someone who was already dying, because to Rukia's eyes, accustomed to and alert of death, it was plain that Hisana was beginning the long downward spiral of someone succumbing to the cold embrace of illness and Death. In Inuzuri, such people were avoided at all costs, like someone suffering from a highly contagious disease. Not only because of fear or contagion, but because of the pain that was inevitably caused by growing close to such people.

But Rukia wasn't in Inuzuri anymore. She knew that she couldn't hold on to all of Inuzuri's superstitions. And death could not be feared just because it was exerting its icy grip over someone who hit a little too close to home for Rukia. Rukia would not fear Death. She couldn't turn her back now, and she wouldn't turn away.

At the same time, a rush of pain hit her stomach at full force. She had never known this woman. How could she be asked to sit by her bedside, what was essentially her death bed, without ever knowing her first? Rukia wondered if Hisana appreciated the irony; the sister who had fled from the other sister when she was in danger of dying was now attended, trapped by illness, being dragged from the sea of life like a fish caught in a net, by the sister she'd left so many years ago.

A slow, painful smile curled halfway across Hisana's lips, as her eyes cleared and, to Rukia's relief, did not brim over with tears, though they did shine with an unnatural brightness. "It is you, Rukia," she murmured.

Hisana stretched out a hand, the smile failing and dying like the bloom of a rose cut off of the stem before it could ever blossom. "Can you forgive me, Rukia?"

Rukia's only response was to reach out and take the hand proffered, no larger than her own, and gently rub the wan skin underneath her fingers.

_People have always asked me how I know my name. And by 'people', I mean Renji, but I'm sure you understand._

_Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure._

_I just have these faint memories, remembrance of days I should not recall._

_I am small in these memories, and I'm being rocked by someone with a sweet voice, singing to me, and calling out my name. Rukia, she calls me._

_The woman who called out… That was you, wasn't it?_


End file.
